Mobile payments app Paytm is open to any kind of regulation, including one the telecom regulator may want to bring in, to ensure that data of its consumers is safe and secure, its founder said, breaking away from the crowd of app makers, most of whom have expressed their reservation against any regulation.

Other app makers, however, countered the view with the likes of Nikhil Pahwa, co-founder of Internet Freedom Foundation, saying that those wanting regulation of apps may want to use it as a tool to gain competitive advantage, and their views do not reflect the view point of all app makers.

Internet & Mobile Association of India (IAMAI), which represents apps such as Facebook, Amazon, MakeMyTrip, and Flipkart, said that app makers were already heavily regulated under the IT Act. However, Paytm founder Vijay Shekhar Sharma told ET that some form of regulation is needed to ensure data belonging to not just its over 320 million consumers, but of all Indians, must not be allowed to go out of the country.

“Data or apps need to be regulated to the extent that individuals have privacy, control, and ownership of their data and can control who can or cannot use their data. Right now, there’s neither a privacy law in the country, nor restrictions to corporates who are using that data.”

When asked whether the country’s largest mobile payments player which is also a payments bank now, was open to being brought under any new laws, Sharma said, “100%. We’re totally clear and we’re asking that entities that hold customer data must not be using that data and letting the data get leaked out.” Paytm went along with Trai’s views, on the lines that data of consumers should remain with them.

“We as a country cannot allow misuse of data. Companies have an unprecedented amount of data on consumers. But the debate that who owns that data has only one answer — customer owns that data and no one else should be allowed to own it, be it company or government,” Sharma said. But app makers and proponents of the free internet say any new regulation cannot be done in an arbitrary way, without taking into account views from stakeholders.

Internet Freedom Foundation’s cofounder Pahwa argued that those wanting regulation of apps do not speak for all app makers. “Just because some apps want to be regulated doesn’t mean all apps would want to be… I don’t think everyone should be made to suffer because of the willingness of a few.”